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Readers Mourn the Loss of ‘The Gun Report’

By Margaret Sullivan June 18, 2014 2:49 pmJune 18, 2014 2:49 pm

Gun violence has rarely been more relevant in America than it is right now, so a recent decision to discontinue “The Gun Report” on Joe Nocera’s blog struck many readers as a simply terrible idea. My office has received more than 100 complaints or laments that it has been discontinued; they don’t seem to be a part of a writing campaign but an outpouring from individuals with strong feelings.

“I’m so terribly sad to hear that the project has ended,” wrote one reader, Andrea Filkins. She fears that “once again victims will become anonymous and their stories will no longer spread.”

The Gun Report, begun shortly after the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., consisted of a daily list of all the gun-related deaths in the United States. Written in recent months by Mr. Nocera’s editorial assistant, Jennifer Mascia, it was published five days a week.
With its grim recitation of incidents, topped by an engaging introduction, it generated a great deal of reader commentary – typically over 150 comments per post. And normally, the discussion, while passionate and well-informed, was remarkably temperate.

A reader, George H. Foster, wrote:

This blog is the most civilized place to discuss guns in our society. As a gun owner rights person, I have enjoyed battling the controlistas by challenging their philosophical, technical, legal, and political positions. The drive-by people do not do well here. You have to make a point and defend it in some sort of detail.
Stopping it makes no sense. You might try a slightly different approach, but this essentially neutral ground — as best the NYT is capable of — is valuable.

Mr. Nocera told me that the blog had served its purpose. “It felt like the time had come,” he said. “We had made our point.”

Ms. Mascia sees a different motivation – one tied closely to her recent efforts to receive back pay for work done on the blog on her own time, and to get a promotion, giving her higher wages for her work. She and her union representatives believe the work on the blog is more like that of a reporter, editor or producer than that of a news assistant. The disagreement on back pay has not been settled. (She will continue with The Times as a news assistant to Mr. Nocera and columnist Mark Bittman.)

She told me that she had put her heart and soul into the project for well over a year: “I felt a real sense of purpose, and believed this was public service journalism.”

I asked Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, about the decision to end the report.

“It had run its course,” he told me. “It was repetitive, basically a list. I had been thinking about asking Joe to end it for some time.”

Both Mr. Nocera and Mr. Rosenthal told me that the report had not been discontinued because of the disagreement over pay. “There was no other agenda here,” Mr. Nocera said.

It’s outside my purview as public editor to comment on union/management disputes. My role is to advocate for readers and comment on The Times’s journalism. Toward that end, I would say that like many readers, I thought that the report was skillfully done and that it served an important purpose, both in cataloging our country’s deplorable violence and in providing a regular forum for discussion.

One certainty is that the issue of gun violence remains vital for The Times to cover, on both the news and opinion sides.

Mr. Nocera said that he plans to make the subject a major focus of his twice-a-week columns, although in a different form. His regular subjects have been college sports, education and business. Now he will devote significant energy, he said, to gun policy and politics, as well as to telling the stories of individuals and families affected by gun violence, and how the related cases make their way through the criminal justice system.

“We’re not turning our backs on this subject,” he said.

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Liz Spayd is the sixth public editor appointed by The New York Times. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public, principally about news and other coverage in The Times. Her opinions and conclusions are her own. Read more »